Silent Whisper (27 page)

“Of course,” he said. “We have no secrets from one another.”

When we reached the outskirts of Chester, I gave him directions to the cemetery, instructing him where to park in the lot. He got out of the car, coming around to open the door for me. He helped me out, and for it being the second week of December, the day was unusually sunny and balmy. The snow that had been shoved into piles around the perimeter of the parking lot was starting to melt in the warmer temperatures of the past few days.

“You need to give me ten minutes alone,” I said, seeing the puzzled frown cross his face. “You need to trust me on this,” I continued. “After ten minutes, walk towards that mausoleum over there. Do you see the one I’m talking about?”

He nodded.

“About thirty feet from that to the east, you’ll see her grave.”

“Where will you be?” he asked, looking at me with those dark brown eyes that matched my own.

“Close by hopefully,” I said with a sigh.

He didn’t say anything else; he simply nodded as he checked his watch.

I made tracks to her grave, keeping my fingers crossed literally, that this could be pulled off without a hitch.

When I got to her grave there she was, sitting there, arms crossed, waiting for me.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” she asked, tapping her heel against her own headstone and sounding a bit perturbed.

“How did you know? I thought I was your only point of contact?” I asked.

She shrugged. “You’re the only one that can see and hear me; and the only one that I can connect with physically. But I can feel his essence within my spiritual sector. It has to do with love, Parrish. But why did you bring him here? He can’t see me or I him. All I wanted was for you to explain what happened, in case he was still thinking that I deserted him for good.”

“It’s kind of complicated, Ma. I don’t want to be the messenger in all of this. I think you need to talk to him, and he to you…to say what needs to be said to one another for the last time.”

“But how?” she asked, her forehead creasing in confusion.

“They show movies in Limbo, Ma? Ever seen the one titled, ‘Ghost’?”

“Parrish, you’ve lost me,” she replied.

“Remember how the night of the accident, your body merged with mine and you took control?”

“Of course.”

“You need to do that again, except
without
the time-travel element this time. You need to take over my body and make it yours, but stay right here because in a few minutes, Dad will be here and I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to see you and hear you - and vice versa.”

“You’re calling him
Dad?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh Parrish, I’m
so
happy,” she said, wall-to-wall smiles. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“I think I am, Ma. Just make sure you don’t do anything…well, you know?”

“I’m a
responsible
parent, Parrish! I erased
those
memories from your data bank, thank you very much.”

Ah ha! That explains the voids in remembering my ‘episode’ in its entirety.

“I’m ready,” I said. “Give it your best shot.”

And then she came closer, just like before, and I felt the warmth and the tingling sensation as she became one with my human form; my Parrish Locke memory banks were being cleared of all of my data, making way for hers. The heaviness of her occupation was the final conscious feeling that I had before slipping into unawareness, along with a feeling of hope.

Dominic

I glanced at my watch. The ten minutes were up and I was anxious to head into the graveyard to find out exactly what my daughter was about bringing me here like this.

It was strange, but after all, she had asked me to trust her on this, so what choice did I have? I wanted Parrish in my life no matter what her eccentricities happened to be. Some of her conversation with me at the restaurant yesterday seemed to be a bit…over the top, but it didn’t matter. She was the product of Karlie and me, of our love, and I would cherish her for however many years I had left on this planet.

I made my way over to the stone mausoleum she’d pointed out, and then turned to my left, gazing around at the various headstones until my eye caught one about ten yards off. There was a woman in a black dress sitting on it, and immediately I recognized the long, blond, curls that cascaded down her back.

My heart rate increased as I hurried to close the distance. What was Parrish doing? What game was this?

“Parrish?” I called out getting closer to the woman in black.

She turned and faced me, presenting a dazzling smile that I recognized from long ago that caused my stomach to tighten up in a knot.

This isn’t possible…

“Karlie?” I stammered, now standing right there in front of her, gazing down into her beautiful face that hadn’t changed a bit in over twenty-eight years.

“Dominic,” she greeted, in the sweetest voice that I’d ever heard.

Was this real? Or was this some sort of computer-generated image that Parrish had devised as some cruel joke? It couldn’t be because the voice
was
Karlie’s.

I reached my hand out, and touched her shoulder. This was no CGI - this was real!

“My God, Karlie,” I exclaimed, pulling her to her feet. “I don’t understand?”

“It’s a gift, Dominick. A gift from our daughter. She wanted us to talk one last time. There are things I need to say to you, and maybe things you want to say to me?”

I pulled her against me, closing my eyes and letting the familiar feel of her sink into my senses. “You need to explain this to me, Tesoro mio. I feel as if I’ve stepped through the looking glass into another dimension.”

She laughed her beautiful laugh. “I’m the one that’s in the other dimension, Dominic,” she sighed. “I see that Parrish didn’t fill you in on our initial encounter. She probably thought you’d think she was crazy.”

“I might’ve,” I admitted. “So fill me in, my love.”

And she did. Every last detail of what had transpired from the time she left Camden, until the fateful night she died as a result of Walter Locke’s intervention. My blood boiled when she divulged that part, making me promise that I would never let Lana know the truth. If he hadn’t already been dead, I would’ve killed him now.

When she finished, I lifted her chin so that she could see the sadness in my eyes. “It seems that people on both sides were hell-bent on keeping us apart, Karlie. All of the times that I reminded you to trust me, and I assured you that you’d always have my protection - you still didn’t trust it, did you?”

“I’m sorry, Dominic,” she whispered against my chest. “I know that I should’ve told you. It was just that I felt so fucking betrayed when I stopped at the shop that day and found out that you were part of the whole drug smuggling operation; just using my clothing as a front for your…your drug cartel,” she snapped.

“Principessa,” I said, drawing her in closer, “Once again you had no faith in me. May I clarify?”

She nodded against me.

“You remember Marco Trevani?”

“Yes - and I know he turned out to be FBI.”

“That’s correct. The reason I didn’t want him around you, or around me whenever you were there was because I’d been working with him for more than a year back then. Yes, I was assisting the feds in bringing some of the family down, including my blood family. I couldn’t stand that life anymore after I’d met you the first time in Chester. The plan never included using your clothing designs as a front - that was Vinnie’s idea once I’d been called away to fill in temporarily as consigliere for the family. I couldn’t keep a closer eye on him; still, he had my father and Little Sal’s blessing to put the deal together. And what a deal it was.”

“But you were going to let me go down if the authorities had gotten wind of it, weren’t you?”

“Absolutely not, Tesoro. I immediately brought Marco into the picture, and because there was no way to back out of the deal that Vinnie had put together, without drawing attention to what Marco and I were doing, I did the only thing possible to protect you - I signed your share of the company over to Vinnie and Sal. Marco ensured that the cargo would get out of the States without detection, but it was arranged so that once it reached Vinnie’s Italian operations near Palermo, Italian officials that had been working with U.S. officials would make the bust.”

“I don’t understand why you couldn’t have told me.”

“Karlie - I didn’t want you involved. Having knowledge would’ve involved you, baby. Everything would’ve gone as planned if you hadn’t gone to the shop that day and made the discovery. When Vinnie got in and saw that you had, he called my father. Then a few hours later, Marco phoned me letting me know that a contract had been put out on your life by my father.”

“What?” she nearly screamed, backing away from me.

“Yes, it’s true. I left immediately and searched for you.”

“I know the rest,” she replied, sadly. “Belle filled Lana in whom in turn, filled me in.”

“Yes my love,” I said, pulling her back against me. “It was the one time that I was glad you hadn’t put your faith in me for protection. It probably saved your life.”

“Well, just briefly,” she commented wryly.

“But the life of our unborn child was saved indefinitely. I under-estimated the lengths my father would go to in order to protect Vinnie and Sal - and himself for the murder charges of your parents. The truth was, I never intended to go that far with it, and I knew that you hadn’t expected it of me either, but when I found out that he’d put a hit out on you, my mind was made up that he would no longer be in a position of power to ever cause harm to anyone again.”

“Oh Dominic,” she sighed, “I always knew that you had goodness in you, no matter what others said. The evening that I saw you on the news - the day you testified in front of a federal grand jury, I felt that everything had changed. I was hopeful that when it was all over, we could all be together. But you stopped looking for me. Why?”

I shrugged, remembering the day that I had finally stopped calling Belle. “Because amore mio, I resigned myself to the fact that I had no right keeping a beautiful butterfly caged. I knew with the arrests coming down, that I would be indicted as well. I had already arranged of course for immunity on the charges lodged against me in exchange for my testimony, but when I approached Marco with the added bonus of being a witness to the murders of your parents - and the attempted murder of you, I knew that my life would be forever changed. I owed you your freedom and a chance for a normal life.”

“Then what happened?” she asked, and this was the part I knew would get tricky simply because I knew it had pissed Parrish off.

“I went into the federal witness protection program for a little over five years. Vinnie and Sal are doing life in prison. My father died in prison two years after he was convicted, and my mother committed suicide a year after that. There was no reason for me to remain in hiding and I didn’t like it anyway. It felt cowardly to me. Nobody active in LCN has an axe to grind with me any longer, the rest are in prison for life and have been forgotten.”

“So then did you look for me when you left the program?” she asked, brightening up.

“I did,” I replied, “And that’s when I learned you had passed in an automobile accident. Marco helped me to find out. That’s the part - or one of the parts that has our daughter upset.”

“I see,” she said. “And why is that?”

“Apparently she feels that you’ve been delayed in getting to your final destination because you needed me to know that you had died and how.”

“What was important, Dominic, was that I wanted you to know that I never stopped loving you, and that I wanted to come back to you whether you were free to marry me or not. I needed you to be a part of my life, and a father to our child no matter what.”

I cupped her chin with my fingers and tilted her head upward. “I want to kiss you, Karlie.”

“I want you to, Dominic.”

And then I lowered my mouth to hers, savoring the familiar feel of her lips mating with mine, my tongue teased hers and it was as if no time had passed at all. We were still young, and in love and together. Her arms looped around my neck, and she pressed her body against mine.

I pulled my lips from hers momentarily, aware that I’d grown hard for her and not comfortable with the physical ramifications of that. I mean after all, my daughter’s spirit had traded places with her for this brief period of time, but I wasn’t sure if Parrish was cognizant of what was transpiring.

“Don’t worry, Dominic,” Karlie breathed, kissing my lips again playfully, and nipping at my lower one. “Parrish is napping at the moment.”

“It’s occurred to me that I’m an old man and you’re still young, Karlie.”

“That’s not how I see you, Dominic,” she said, molding herself provocatively against me. “You look exactly the same to me as I remember. Even down to the gold wedding band. So Anna stayed with you after all? Huh, who’d have thought,” she murmured, moving her lips seductively against mine again.